Extraction of information from CT scans at different energies

Abstract

The image displayed in computed tomography is a scaled representation of attenuation coefficients within the patient's body. A number of authors have presented methods by which additional information (such as electron density, effective atomic number, and extrapolated attenuation coefficients for therapy applications) can be extracted from CT scans carried out at different energies. In the present paper, the dual-energy method described by Rutherford has been used to produce complete images of effective atomic number and electron density of a known phantom (the AAPM phantom) in order to investigate the usefulness of applying this method to current commercial scanners.